A Sky Witch
by Siachi
Summary: Squall and SeeD return to Esthar after Ellone Loire is violently kidnapped. But someone is waiting for them, sending them dreams of the past. Laguna discovers that though Adel is dead, her legacy lives on.
1. The Ramp

Chapter One

**5.46 am:**

Ellone Loire let her head loll back on the leather seat of the KG Nagnem as the car sped along the near-deserted road. The upholstery was fresh and stiff, cool against her cheek. The car was a new model, part of a standard benefits package with the company, and she could still smell the factory polish. It was just becoming light on the Ramp, the massive multi-lane highway that gave access to the Estharian capital.

The rising sun's rays crept across the car, and shone across her face. Behind her lids the comfortable dark turned dull red. Ellone grimaced and turned her face away, to stare out at the roadscape whipping past instead. In an hour's time the lanes would be crammed with workers and bulk transporters, but for now the Speaker for Davensport North-East could marvel at how peaceful the Ramp was. If only you didn't have to be up so early to see it like this. With the blue spires of her adopted city looming around them now, she tried to stifle a yawn and didn't quite make it. Karlin Gardel, seated next to her, caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. The secretary, smiled through his bristling beard, and tapped the screen of his wrist-comp, freezing the data display he'd been watching in the air in front of him.

"Someone needs to catch up on their sleep, obviously,"

She looked down at the dapper little blond man beside her, impeccably dressed in fresh open-neck shirt and one of those light grey Hilda Braun suits he liked, and wondered how he was always so awake in the mornings.

"If someone's staff would brief her, instead of sitting about making smart comments every morning, then she might," she replied with mock-irritation.

Karlin grinned. It was well known among the Speaker's staff she hated losing the peace tiny spaces in the day gave her from the manic pace of the Job. Ellone and her shawl had driven her Chief of Staff bananas more then once, something Karlin and her other staffers never tired of watching. But last night had been Ellone's thirty-second birthday. For once, her tiredness this morning had nothing to do with work.

"Its twenty minutes till Harek reaches the station," he said gently, indicating their driver, "Why don't you grab a quick nap till then? We can do the briefing at the office for once."

"Done," Ellone told him.

She curled up on the seat and let the hum of the hydrogen engine wash over her. Next to her, Karlin stared out of the window, waiting idly for the car to reach the Tube they would take to their Congressional office. Even at this hour Maintenance were out. Trying to beat the rush hour he supposed. Up ahead, behind a lurid orange plastic fence a gutterbot was mindlessly scooping dirt out of a narrow trench and piling it into a tarnished yellow skip. The wind carried some of the dust towards his window. Three workers in orange rubber suits clustered around an open sewage hole were the only humans about, their faces masked from the dust by their re-breathers and hoods. Sewage night-shift, leaving before the dump trucks arrived. The tallest was tapping the keys of his J-Pad, probably e-posting he was on his way home.

There was a tiny bump in the car; it had shifted gear. Harek swore softly, then louder. Karlin's attention snapped up to the driver's face in the mirror, alarmed. Next to him Ellone had sat back up, intent, like a hunting dog catching a faint scent.

"The car, its disabled my driver protocol," Harek sounded shocked as he answered their worried stares "The autopilot's taken over and frozen me out. Wha- account revoked for unsafe driving pattern?"

"We're changing lanes," Karlin said.

He hit the door release pad with his palm. It didn't open. A chime sounded from the speaker set in the headrest; the car's Interactive Program purred in his ear.

"**We are sorry, but this unit cannot comply with your request right now. Please wait for vehicle de-acceleration and try later."**

"Shit!"

He slammed his fist against the window. Fat chance of breaking it doing that, the stuff was designed to stop a rocket. Harek was equally stuck trying jam the break pedal down with both feet. It stayed stubbornly up.

"Computer," Ellone said tight-voiced, "This is Ellone Loire speaking, driver ident WKP900234G. Match my number and voiceprint. I order you to cease-"

There came that chime again.

"**This unit does not hold any record of the individual named Loire, Ellone. Unable to comply."**

"What the hell is going on?" Harek yelled. The car was on the wrong side of the road now, slowing down, pulling over. The right wing-mirror clipped bar after bar of orange fencing, making the plastic barricade ripple like a conga line. And by its trench no longer, but looming ahead like a malign colossus, stood the gutterbot.

They were built around obsolete SAM08G chassis's imported cheap from Galbadia, Karlin remembered. The cannons were dismounted, and the claws swapped for sockets. Maintenance would plug whatever tool was needed for a particular job into the machine and send it out. This one's arms ended in a toothy digger scoop and a jackhammer. The car was coasting to a stop next to it.

_Designed to stop a rocket._

Ellone leaned between the seats and tried to grab her charging portable. It was just out of reach. She turned urgently to Harek; "Grab my phone now!" she ordered, and the chauffer dived down for it.

"Too late," Karlin said.

The gutterbot leaned over the plastic barrier and slotted its scoop under the middle of the Nagnem with machine precision. Like a human rolling a log over, it heaved once, and the car rolled clear across the highway to crash into one of the spectacular cryst-crete pillars supporting the next section of the Ramp.

**5.52 am:**

Ellone opened her eyes and looked down at the roof. It was buckled and dented, but it hadn't caved in and that was good. Blood leaked from her nose and splashed on the puddle below. It felt hot and sharp to breathe through. She was hanging upside down by her belt. Somehow she'd got a foot wedged under the front seat as well. Harek's seat was empty; he hadn't been wearing his belt. Who needed to these days? Wow, that was a lot of blood. Was any of it hers? The knowing, and the not knowing, frightened her more then the rush of the accident. She felt her throat starting to constrict.

_You don't have time,_ a part of her that had been watching told her rather chillily. _Think! Is anything burning? Can you smell any smoke?_

She sniffed cautiously at the inside of the car.

"No," she told herself.

_Wow. Good. Then get out of the car! _

"My arm's broken," she said plaintively.

_Well, we know how to fix that don't we? _

"Curaga!"

The spell coursed through her numb body like a warming spirit on a cold day, knitting flesh together her mind hadn't known was torn. A cloudy feeling lifted from her mind, and beside her Karlin's ragged breathing sounded suddenly louder. He was hanging loosely from the harness of his belt. She saw that bone bulged where it shouldn't, and felt some of the blood pooling in her head quit her cheeks.

"Regen!"

_He'll be fine. Where is that 'bot now? You need to get. Out. Of. The. Car. _

She fumbled for her belt and heard it click open. Then she dropped with a squelch onto the car roof. She didn't look at the front seats. The right door had buckled out in the middle, and the window glass splintered with it, leaving wicked curved shards sticking out of the frame.

"Protect!"

She leaned back and wrapped her arms around the headrests on either side of her, then kicked out, once, twice, three times. The glass cracked, and then splintered away. She drew her foot carefully away, and crouched to shuffle up to the opening. Gingerly she put her head and arms through, and slid forward.

Glass crunched underfoot, somewhere to her right. Half in, half out of the car, Ellone turned her head. A figure, suited in bright orange, stood not three feet away. Something that looked like a bulky gaming-console pistol, with a cheap plastic handgrip, dangled negligently from one rubber-gloved hand. Tazer. Set into the rebreather mask, IR goggles watched her impassively.

Fixed together with the helmet, it looked, she thought dizzily, like someone wearing a post-modern death mask. She fixed the IR goggles with a deliberate stare.

"Don't do this," she told the plastic orbs. It was useless, but she had to try. The figure made two smart steps away from her. Clearing the field of fire for someone behind her she realized.

"Thunda-"

The world exploded into shades of red and blue.

**5:57 am:**

The gunman pulled the pin and rolled the grenade into the wreck and raced away, counting down. A red van tore past, its driver undoubtedly on the portable to the authorities. Behind him came a roar, a flash, and a hot sucking sensation as the air was super-heated by the fireball leaving the car. Even the tramp of the gutterbot's feet, as the machine was released to run amok among the morning traffic, was drowned out by the soundwave. The gunman reached the sewer-hole where the others had already lowered the body of the Speaker into its sludgy depths, and flung himself down after them. The manhole cover was pulled quickly over the hole of daylight and locked into place with a swift twist.

_Snick. _


	2. Coming Home

Chapter Two

Squall strode along the corridor fingering the links of the chain in his pocket. Behind him he could hear the click-clack of Xu's heels, as she struggled to keep up with him, and tried not to show it.

"Sir, could you at least just sign these?" she called after his retreating back, a note of exasperation creeping past her usual business-like tones.

"I'm telling you the same thing I told Irvine at the landing pad," Squall called over his shoulder without breaking stride, "I'm not touching anything till I've seen my wife."

Xu shuffled her papers hurriedly while she followed. Squall reached the elevator and hit the call button. The door opened with a clunk, and he stepped inside. Xu reached the doors and waved a page with lots of emboldened words at him.

"It's important!" she said reproachfully.

"So is this," Squall told her, and tapped the button for his floor. The doors slid shut, and with a steady hum the elevator began to take him up.

In the corridor below, Xu glared at the lift doors for a moment, and then shrugged her immaculately Armona-suited shoulders.

"Tightarse!" she muttered, just to vent, and pulled a pen out of her top pocket. Licking her finger and frowning in concentration, she started working her way through the sheets on the walk back to her office. By the time she reached the second floor she was humming sotto-voiced to herself.

In the lift, Squall studied his reflection in the metal doors. He'd resisted cutting off his bangs for the mission, but the desert sun had bleached his hair to light chestnut, and tanned him as brown. His dress uniform's jacket was still snug across the shoulders, even open, but the white t-shirt he had on hung loose now. He'd gone down two belt notches on his belt to. He must have lost twenty pounds up in the mountains. The muscle was still there, but you could see his ribs. He was as lean and rangy as a whippet. Well, maybe she'd like it. He fiddled impatiently with the chain once more. Then the elevator chimed as the doors opened at their floor.

Squall stepped out onto the corridor, trying to ignore the odd fluttering in his stomach. Why she still had that effect on him he didn't know, but something Laguna had once said floated through his head; 'Love is someone who makes you laugh at yourself.' He was still grinning to himself when he when he touched reached their quarters and touched the bell. He realised he still had the chain in his hand and hurriedly stuck it behind his back.

"Hello? Who is it?" Rinoa's voice asked him from the speaker grill. It was strange to hear after nearly four months.

"Hello Rin, it's me," he told it, "I'm back," he added somewhat redundantly.

The door hissed open straight away, but there was no-one standing in it. Squall blinked, half-holding up his present. A slim bare arm snaked round the doorframe, grasped the front of his jacket firmly, and pulled. Behind him, the door slid smoothly shut.

Later, as they lay on the bed, she laid the chain on her up-turned hand and spread her fingers wide, holding it up to catch the late afternoon sun streaming through the bedroom window.

"Do you like it?" Squall asked her as she turned it back and forth.

"It's beautiful," she said "Where did you find this?"

"There's a little gold dust up in the mountains there," he said "And the Malisans love it. Their smiths still work on each piece of jewellery by hand up there. They can shape it into the most amazingly intricate pieces you'll every see."

She sat up and twisted around, holding the chain up by both ends for him to take.

"Help me put it on!"

Squall pulled himself upright and took the ends from her. The nails of his fingers had grown long while he'd been away, and he pulled the little gold clasp of the chain back easily, and fitted it through the hoop on the other end. Rinoa reached behind her and settled the chain around her neck. Squall stretched back out on the bed, resting his head on one hand and half-closing his eyes. She turned around uncertainly and flicked her hair away from her eyes.

"Well, what do you think?" she asked him.

"Mhmmm," Squall murmured drowsily.

She punched him on the arm; "Look at the chain you idiot!"

"I was," Squall protested, laughing.

"Hmmm," she said, not convinced. She ran a nail up across his chest and spread her hand against his ribs.

"You've lost weight," she told him critically.

"And you've put some on," he said, poking her gently in the belly. Rinoa shifted uncomfortably.

"Yes. About that," she said, "Squall there was something I was meaning to tell you when you got back. That… well, got lost in the moment."

Squall looked at her; "What?"

Rinoa sighed and reached out to take his hand between her own, deciding she needed to be unusually blunt with this news.

"Squall, I'm going to have a baby," she told him, emphasising the noun.

At least the way she phrased it saved him one awkward question. After you'd known Rinoa a while, you learnt to listen for subtle shades of meaning. Still, a lot passed through Squall's mind in the split second before he had to react to this news. Dates, time, lack of messages, memories… Too many demands obliterated coherence. Rinoa waited patiently beside him for him to sort himself out.

"Wha... How!"

"The usual way I hope," Rinoa said primly.

"But weren't you on the… on the thing!" he demanded. It felt like he was seventeen again, and Cid was giving up the helm of Balamb Garden to him just before the Galbadians caught them. Huge, looming, _unexpected_ responsibility.

"Yes Squall," she said slowly and patiently, "I was on _the thing_. They don't always work, you know."

Squall paused at her answer. It must've been a big shock to Rinoa, this discovery, and she hadn't broken it to him gently. He sensed a certain measuring of the way things stood between them that hadn't been there before. He found he was doing it too. At certain times in any relationship, people wrap closer together or they drift apart, he realised. Life had shifted for her and through her, for him as well. The change was for the deeper, strange because it disturbed the comfortable, familiar outlines of his life. It could be frightening, but it didn't have to be.

Rinoa opened her mouth to start speaking but he put his hand against her shoulder, stopping her. Time to answer the question she hadn't asked him.

"I'd be stopping working in the field then. Maybe delegating a bit of the Director's paperwork to Xu and Quistis to?" he offered cautiously.

"That's a start," she said weakly. Somehow, she'd expected more. Utterly frustrated with the pace of it all, she reached across and pulled him upright by main force. A startled Squall found himself nose-to-nose with his wife, belatedly returning a fierce embrace.

"Love, are you serious about this? It can't just be us any more," Rinoa murmured, slowly bringing her head to rest against his.

"Of course," he answered, as if it was impossible to think otherwise. Closing his eyes, he fell back to the bed, pulling her with him. Humming to himself, he stretched out a hand and began to tangle and untangle the threads of her hair. Rinoa lay awake on his chest, feeling it rise and fall, and wondering if she would ever entirely understand Squall. There was so much they had to even start to discuss too; classes, appointments, doctors, quarters. But it could rest there for now.

Besides, she could hear his heartbeat now; it was pounding.


	3. On Four Fingers

Chapter Three

The dust-devils whipped across the surface of the little dirt airstrip. If you looked closely, or had had too much of the strong afternoon Centran sun, you could just make out strange jagged patterns shifting about in the brown sands. This, apart from a few stands of thorny desert scrub trees, pretty much summed up the flatlands all around them, Irvine thought, tapping ash onto the bonnet of the buggy he was leaning against. The place was a complete shithole, even by the long list of shitholes his career had sent him to. And he'd thought being a mercenary was supposed to be all about bad attitude and snappy dressing.

A particularly strong gust of wind blew through the hanger entrance. It caught him just as he inhaled, sending him bending over the hood, coughing furiously and dribbling smoke. His view of the bare concrete block walls of the hanger and its corrugated iron roof blurred up as his eyes teared up from the grit in them.

"-uck!"

"What's wrong Cowboy?"

Selphie Tilmitt pushed herself out from underneath the buggy, still on the wheelie-board she'd been lying on while she checked on the thing's brake hoses. Like Irvine, she was dressed for the desert; splotchy khaki pants and waist-length bush jacket, unbuttoned in the stifling heat of the hanger. The plain navy t-shirt underneath was stained with round sweat-patches at the arms. She wiped a greasy hand on it, before smoothing her hair back and adjusting the big red bandana she wore, trying to keep more of it out of her eyes.

"Well?" she asked him again, holding out a hand to be helped up.

"Aw, I just got a mouthful of grit thanks to the wind and this here cigarette," Irvine told her, pulling her to her feet. As usual she felt like she weighed nothing.

"Kadowaki always said those things were bad for you," Selphie told him unsympathetically. It was one of their old arguments.

"Meh. She never said anything about them choking me to death," Irvine grumbled, wiping at his eyes. He hawked and spat, trying to clear the taste of dust from his mouth. Selphie wrinkled her nose.

"Here, you look like you could use this," she said, picking up her water bottle from the rough concrete floor and passing it to him.

"Thanks," he said gratefully as he took it from her and had a long swig. Selphie spread her arms and leaned gingerly back against the warm buggy with a tired groan. Irvine finished the water before he'd slaked his thirst. He gave the squeeze bottle a wry look, then screwed the cap back on and waved the bottle at the desert buggy and its five neighbors.

"Finished?"

"Yeah, that was the last maintenance check. She's ready to rumble," Selphie patted the side of the ramshackle vehicle fondly. A mischievous glint appeared in her eye; "Hheeeyy… Want to take her for a spin?"

Irvine regarded the buggy dubiously. It and its five neighbors were on loan from the Four Finger archipelago authorities. The island cops claimed to use them for off-road chases, and they certainly looked beaten-up enough for it. The machines were squat, oblong ground-huggers, with three sets of thick bubble-wheels and plenty of suspension. Like the workhorse jeep, they were open-topped, with space for a triad to huddle in the back, and a driver and passenger at the front. Selphie and the other mechanics had spent the last two weeks armoring and fitting them with scaled-down front-seat autocannon which they swore, _swore_, would be compensated for by the souped-up engines and suspension.

"No thanks," he said with feeling. Selphie followed his gaze to the autocannon.

"Sweet isn't it?" she said proudly "I haven't played with anything like these since Dollet. You know the techs here say no-one's ever mounted anything of this caliber on one of these buggies. We're breaking new ground here."

"Darling, you amaze me as always," Irvine said dryly. Selpie rolled her eyes at his tone.

"You're just jealous because they're so much bigger then your gun," she informed him, tossing her head. The effect was only slightly spoilt by a few strands of hair escaping her bandana and sticking across her cheek. Her top also stuck in interesting ways Irvine noticed. He puffed out his chest.

"There's nothing wrong with my gun," he proclaimed. He pulled Exeter from the over-shoulder holster slung around his torso and hefted it; "It's got reach, stopping-power, target-discrimination-"

"Pft, and so dinky," she pouted at him, flicking at her cheek in annoyance.

"Gun-fetishist," he growled back.

"Girlie-man!"

"Grease-monkey!"

"Man-slu-arrrgghh! No tickling! That's cheating!"

"Ah-, Excuse me?" came an anxious voice behind them. The speaker was the kind to fall back on formality to reassure himself. They broke apart, still giggling. Master-Sergeant Deems stood to attention, eyes pointedly averted. A stocky balding man in his late thirties, Deems was mission-analyst and the third member of the command triad for this assignment. He was from the rebuilt Galbadia Garden, which still had its own way of doing things. Irvine, since making the jump to the more anarchical culture at Balamb, found the Sergeant's rigid brooding hard to endure. The man badly needed to get laid in his opinion, something he'd voiced to Selphie loudly and often. She just seemed to work around him in her usual sunny way.

"Sir, Ma'am," he said, holding his salute stiffly until they both made brief acknowledgements.

"You don't have to salute us in private Mr Deems," Selphie told the man, smile still lurking round the corners of her mouth. Deems nodded stiffly, but still stood in the formal at-ease posture.

"Something come up, Sergeant?" added Irvine wearily, already bored with this charade. They'd have been on first names with anyone else by now, but though he'd been told Deems' name, his brain rejected identifying the sergeant by it.

"Begging your pardon sir, but the Prime Minister's office has just called to say that the rebels' plane has changed its flight path- they'll be here in three hours."

Irvine and Selphie exchanged a tense look.

"It's really going to happen then," she said, sounding ambivalent.

"Looks like it," Irvine agreed, trying for insouciance and missing.

Crisis generally blew up quickly from small beginnings for SeeDs. Long ago, Centra had been the centre of a great maritime civilization, whose ruins you could find everywhere across the deserts. The continent had had its own Lunar Cry and the golden age of Centran power had ended abruptly, never to return. Even today the region was under-populated- and poor, backward and factionalized. The Four Fingers Archipelago was no exception- Prime Minister Gabon had come to power in a coup twenty-eight years ago, and survived several abortive ones since. One opposition leader-in-exile learned his lesson, and sought outside help. He found it in the giants of the post-Second Sorcery War world- the Trabian Combines.

Fortune had smiled on Trabia. The smallest of the Northern powers had been virtually unscathed by the war or the Cry, and it's economy had been massively boosted by the effort to contain the insatiable Lunar abominations. Trabian manufacturing's demand for raw material had in turn sent producer prices skyrocketing. Suddenly it was worth doing business in parts of the world usually ignored- and Omolla Gabon's government was in trouble.

For the islands held rich deposits of gold and copper, vital metals for the wiring in modern combat suits and warbots that the Northern armies were screaming for. Gabon and his cronies had long dominated the islands' National Copper Board (NCB), a state-owned combine, and for years they siphoned off its profits into their own bank accounts. Outsiders were firmly shut-out from the government monopoly, something the Combines, for all their economic muscle, could do nothing about. Legally. Gabon's enemies had found the lever they could use to pry him from power.

An informal cartel was formed to do something about the Four Fingers problem. In exchange for promises to dismantle the NCB and sell on its assets and claims, the cartel had hired two freelance Galbadian ex-army officers to organize and lead a rebellion against Gabon. They didn't dare approach SeeD, because SeeD had just been contracted by Gabon to train his security services- Xu had passed it on to Irvine and Selphie as a quiet assignment were they would be together.

The Combines had hired their mercenaries elsewhere instead. They were mostly also Galbadian ex-army types. Meanwhile disaffected members of the islands' police were approached and 'security' equipment stockpiled for 'mines' whose locations were never exactly specified. The preparations for the coup had gone extremely smoothly in fact, watched with polite interest by SeeD's industrial espionage unit.

Perhaps the coup-paymasters had no idea how thoroughly their organizations had been infiltrated, but more likely they had never taken the idea seriously. Irvine had been particularly infuriated by their thoughtless intrusion into his job. The idea that the Combine execs might use violence get their way didn't bother him- he knew the world wasn't perfect. But their arrogance, their certainty that they were safe from the nasty little squabbles of everyone else in the world, and that these should be arranged to suit them, did. He'd been looking forward to dragging them all down.

Unfortunately things hadn't gone entirely to plan. The main body of mercenaries had been observed boarding a chartered Trabian plane allegedly to mount an anti-piracy drive off the mainland. The idea had been to arrest all the foreigners at the Archipelago's main airport. Then one of Gabon's police chiefs, earlier suspected of sympathy with the putsch, now attempted to redeem himself in the eyes of his boss. His men swarmed in too early, arresting the senior mercenary officer and twenty-one others at an airport warehouse. They'd only been an advance party, sent to bring in the coup's equipment.

The other plotters were tipped off by panicked com calls. Faced between a long death in a squalid mainland prison or a firing squad on the Archipelago, and running out of fuel, the mercenaries took the crew of their jet hostage and demanded a landing spot and a new plane. Lacking an air force to actually force the plane down, Gabon agreed. Which was how Irvine and the rest of the SeeDs found themselves standing around in a tiny airfield that started off as part of a flying doctor service, waiting for a plane with more hijackers then hostages.


	4. Thunder Run: Part One

Chapter Four- Part One

Irvine left himself fall into a sniper's watchfulness as they watched the plane taxi down the runway, a plume of orange dust swirling behind it. He followed it automatically with the autocannon's gun sights. The mercenaries hadn't stinted themselves- their aircraft was a decommissioned Estharian sonic plane, the toy of flashy rich types with big entourages. Or in this case, a jet that could transport a seventy-two strong unit at three times the speed of sound and still pass for civilian. With its hooked nose cone and sleek outline it looked like a mechanical raptor, an eagle of the skies. The aging, tubby CC-780 Dollet cargo plane parked for easy take-off looked like a beached whale in comparison.

His ear pin vibrated insistently; someone from the Situation room was trying to reach him. The hijacked plane was coasting to a stop at the end of its runway, parallel with the CC-780 at the start of its. Only a few hundred yards separated the two planes. Irvine reached up and squashed the little device deeper into his ear, then rubbed at his aching eyes. After this was all over he was going to sleep somewhere well away from the sun's glare.

"Yes?"

"-olice Commissioner Bashtor calling Colonel Irvine. Can you hear me Colonel?" Gabon's breathy field commander bellowed in his ear, using Irvine's temporary contract-rank. He sounded like a man who'd been doing a lot of fast talking.

"Receiving you loud and clear Commissioner,"

"Major Merton has just been in contact about your buggy squads. He wasn't happy."

Irvine ran a hand through his hair to burn off some nervous energy. The gunner's seating in the buggy was too tight, cramping him. Had Bashtor offered something stupid to settle the rattled hijacker's leader?

"He can hardly have expected an empty airport," he snapped.

"That's what I told him," Bashtor said impatiently "He didn't like that either. We had quite a fight going. He says he's sending a section out to check the plane, and they're taking their pilots out with them. The rest of the hostages stay on the jet."

"Thank you, Commissioner," Irvine said, trying to sound grateful, not surprised. Friction with Gabon's lieutenants had been going on since he'd pushed them out of ground operations after the interception debacle. He'd expected a last minute lecture.

"I thought you should know the situation," the policeman answered him stiffly, "Are your people ready?"

Irvine glanced down at his wrist-comp, plugged into the hostage-rescue teams' field communications system. All sections had called in and were on stand-by, just as they'd been for the last half-hour.

"Yes Commissioner,"

Then good luck, Mr Kinneas. Bashtor out,"

Irvine nodded automatically, and then realized that Bashtor wasn't speaking by vid and couldn't have seen the gesture. The Centran driver did though, and gave a curt nod back as he released the buggy's clutch. The sound of the squadron's engines rose from a quiet hum to a hard growl.

Selphie stared at the omnithopter's sensor panel over the head of the co-pilot, and thumbed her wrist-comp. Here, up above the cloud-cover, it was hard to picture what was happening below on the tiny airfield. The human mind had a hard time with the scale that their machine's sensors had to cover. Irvine's face appeared on-screen quickly enough though, his image looking intense.

"Hey. What you got?"

"We've got two MOIs moving on the IR scanner," she told him crisply, "The Situation people are getting the same from the feed off the backscatter van. There's a group of eight moving into the pilot's cabin and a dozen more moving to the exit by the nose. We think that'll be the scouting section."

"And the others are the stewards and guards," he said, catching up with her "They're locking them in there…"

"With those anti-intruder doors it's the most secure place on the plane," she agreed. Movement on the image screen caught her eye, "Hang on. The air chutes have just come down. The scouts are coming out. What about the stewards Cowboy?"

"You'll have to make a Thunder run to get them," he said sourly.

"Hey, lucky us," she smiled at his distracted image, "I thought I'd have to do something _hard_."

She saw his face change on the screen, becoming Irvine, not 'Colonel Kinneas', for a split second.

"Sel-"

_"What?"_

He hesitated, caught between screens, then distracted himself long enough from the action in front of him to meet her eyes and flash a tired grin.

"Don't do anything stupid will you?"

"Look," she told him exasperatedly "It'll be fine. You had us practice this like, forever. Just you worry about yourself. And for Hyne's sake do something about that hair."

She blew him a deft kiss as his image reached a startled hand up to his head, and cut the link. She waved the descent signal to the waiting pilot, then slid through the cockpit hatch to get herself webbed in with the rest of her triad. Beneath her  
the floor of the omnithopter tilted as the machine began its attack run.

"Thunder run," Selphie muttered to no one in particular as she settled by the left-side bay doors "Whoopy-doo. Oh yes indeedy."

Irvine and the buggy squadron sat and watched as the first hijackers disembarked. They'd blown all six slides simultaneously, giving the mercenaries in the plane wide fields of fire. Six armored figures had slid down the chute nearest the white jet's nose, and fanned out around its base. They were followed by two hunched men in grey flightsuits, the hijacked plane's unlucky pilots. They were each grabbed unceremoniously by the mercenary nearest them and shoved into the middle of the hijackers' box formation. Behind the men the last two triads came smoothly out.

Trapped in the centre of a staggered quadrangle, the pilots were marched at sword-point towards the waiting CC-880. The Galbadians watched the two lines of buggies spread out in front of the hangers nervously. Their rear triad glared back at the hijacked jet. Poised above them, unnoticed and ignored, two little black dots appeared in the sky and began to drop towards the airstrip.

"Things are going to go noisy," Irvine muttered to himself. He cleared his throat and issued a general address through his wrist-comp; "Okay everyone, this is it. Flight A2 is coming in hard. Everyone wait for their pass, and follow your selected targets. Await my order: Wait… wait…"

The Centran pilot sent his machine into a steep drop before starting the last leg of the attack run. The deck titled sharply underfoot and Selphie felt her last meal being pulled unpleasantly towards the 'thoper's nose. She gripped her restraints more tightly and tried to ignore the feeling that her stomach had dropped several yards beneath her feet. She could hear Sakia's teeth rattling next to her with the judders of the small craft's vibrations as it plunged towards the ground, but the little SeeD stared stoically in front of her. Denjac, the third member of the triad, was strapped by the bay doors right where the whistle of the turbulence was loudest. He had a light covering of sweat trickling down his chiselled face.

The omnithopter banked right as the pilot corrected his approach and led the pass over the airstrip. They came in fast, flattening out from their steep curve just above the start of the strip. Denjac came out with a stream of oaths, and even Sakia's face looked white at how fine the pilot had cut it. Denjac reached up and hit the release switch for the bay door, then pulled himself into his post. Sakia staggered after him as the wind tore and plucked at the SeeDs, and the tarmac whipped by underneath them. Clinging onto a hand-strap each, the two framed the open door and checked their weapons. Sakia had a broad bladed bio-knife in an arm sheath, while Denjac trailed a bulky gunblade from his right hand. Somehow you could tell he was from Galbadia Garden.

Selphie had already unsheathed Strange Vision and unwound the chains, feeling the weight of the metal links as they rattled together. Her blood had begun to pound with the falling hum of the engines and the thought of what came next. There was something about mortal danger that made her feel more alive. For a short time she would experience sensation more intense then any drug, and afterwards she would be giddy at life. It struck her, as she loosed her restraints, that safe people would find that view crazy. The thought of trying to explain it across the gulf of experience between her and most of the world struck her as so absurd she just laughed out loud.

Denjac gave her an unnerved glance, and then turned to give a meaningful look to Sakia. But the little blonde SeeD was staring out the bay doors and pointing. Armoured figures were scattering away from their approach, weapons firing wildly. They were about to run the length of the white jet.

The Galbadian scouts crossed the space between the two planes at a quick trot, keeping a wary eye on the buggy squadrons stationed near either end of the CC-880. They'd also noticed the hangars behind the transport plane, Irvine thought. The mercenaries had kept their pilot hostages boxed between all four triads, at the middle of a loose-diamond shaped formation. One triad at its tip had acted as point-men, another directly behind the pilots as the rearguard. Now, as they reached the plane, the flankers fanned out, grabbing what cover they could behind the wheels and passenger steps. The point-men stormed up the steps and burst into the empty plane, gunblades cocked. The pilots were left milling about uncertainly at the bottom the stairs, too important for the hijackers' to allow them to board just yet.

All the same, the rearguard ostensibly ignored them; crouching on the tarmac instead and watching their route back to the safety of the white plane. Irvine had been tensed for a cry of rage from the pilotless CC-880, perhaps when the Galbadians' point-men found the smashed control panels. But the mercenaries were better then he'd thought. It was a man from the rear-guard triad who sprang to his feet incredulously, jabbing his gunblade at Selphie's flight.

He turned, probably trying to take one of the pilots as a shield. Instead his body flopped about like a hooked fish on a line, as it was punched through with the heavy autocannon rounds Irvine aimed at him. All around, Irvine was vaguely aware of the ambush erupting as he shouted the attack order over the com-net. The important thing was not to think too hard about it. In a minute the problems would come flooding in, but for now he had a window to throw off his lethargy. He used it, fixing his mind to the sights of the swerving buggy as he tracked a second running figure.

The Centran broke his de-acceleration run over the hijacker's plane. The omnithopter spun into a sickening ribbon loop, a 180ْ nose-to-tail that killed what was left of their velocity from the propulsion engines. Selphie's ears caught the change in engine pitch just before the pilot threw his machine into the descending spiral.

"BRACE!" she yelled, grabbing for the seat she'd just stood up from. The others jammed themselves in just in time, the tail of the omnithopter started swinging round like a pilotless ship rudder a heartbeat later. Sakia's feet actually left the deck as she was lifted up from her handgrips in the direction of the open bay doors. She kicked out hard with one foot and pushed herself away with the 'thopter wall. It spun the little SeeD around to face the wall, but using her momentum she managed to catch her seat with an arm and a leg. She clamped herself to it like Selphie, who heard a stream of curses coming out of the blonde woman's mouth. Denjac looked at Selphie; his face grimaced in effort, but his flecked-brown eyes huge with a kind of wondering.

"What's he _doing!_ Is this psycho trying to kill us!" he screamed at her. Selphie tried to shake her head at that, but had to stop to concentrate on clinging to her chair until her head caught up with her body. Just when she thought she was going to lose her grip entirely the spinning stopped. The jump-jets came on with a roar that rattled the deck-plates. Selphie let herself go limp a little with relief. That had been a little _too_ intense, even for her. Denjac still had a death-grip on his handstrap. His knuckles were white under his tan, and so was his face.

"We're over the nose Ma'am," he said a little unsteadily.


	5. Thunder Run: Part Two

Hot air blasted past Irvine, and he smelt its heat, heavy on his lungs as he drew breath to scream. Around him clods of dirt were still raining down. A smart missile had blown a smoking crater in the airstrip right across the buggy's path. Only a sharp swerve from the police driver had thrown the damn thing off course. The Galbadians had started spilling off the chutes on the far side of their plane as soon as the shooting had started, but they'd been checked by the police marksmen scattered through the thorn trees and rocks that ringed the strip. It was the side of the white jet facing the hangers and buggies where all hell had broken loose. A missile team and two portable maser cannons had started targeting the buggies from the chute doors, trying to support the scouts. Other mercenaries had broken the plane windows and sent spell-blasts arcing out. It looked to Irvine, his ears still ringing from the near-miss, like it was raining fireballs. The carefully packed-down earth of the airstrip was torn up and churned by the blasts and the spinning wheels of swerving vehicles.

The buggies were catching the worst of it; by tearing back-and-forth along the length of the jet hosing it with autocannon fire, they turned themselves into big fat targets. But they were needed. They acted as a screen for Sergeant Deem's men as they boiled out of the hangers and stormed the CC-880. Irvine had lost track of the pilots in the melee, and he didn't think he'd be able to hear Deem's voice right now if the Sergeant screamed down the com-net. He badly wanted a cigarette. Gods he hated command sometimes.

The brakes squealed as his driver pulled them round with a handbrake turn, and the hijackers' plane swung back into view. Only this time a black omnithopter hovered across its beaky nose cone, while a second circled protectively above, guns spitting at targets on the ground. Irvine flung back his head and whooped raucously when he saw them, the pride at the sight of Selphie in action tinged was with the relief she'd made it down safely. That pilot was getting his drinks bought for him tonight that was for damn sure.

He turned his attention back to his sights, lining the autocannon up with the door nearest the nose, where the missile team had fired from. The mercenaries outside would be pounding on the cabin door by now, he thought. They could use a distraction. Besides, he grinned to himself, he couldn't let her take _all_ the credit…

The buggy's seat buckled sharply under him, like they'd just hit a rock in the strip. He seemed to hang awkwardly in the hang for a minute, waiting for gravity to catch up. His straps should have bounced him back, but he just kept rising. There was no sound, but the air seemed to coil itself sinuously around him, plucking up his outstretched body effortlessly. He flew upwards; riding a wave of fire up till it broke on the sky, and sucked him back down with its retreat.

Smoking

he was sosore

heburned

and

Selphie stood up and freed her nunchaku with a sharp flick of her wrist. To her left Sakia also got up and shook her head to clear it, making her blonde topknot bristle even more wildly. Denjac's hand snaked through the air, making his spell's gestures with the same crisp precision that she recognised from Irvine's spellcasting. He pointed at her and released the energy with a wave of his hand. White bars of light encased her body in a flickering box that shrunk to fit her shape.

"Shell!"

Sakia wasn't far behind, weaving her spell in her own personalised system of hand gestures. Balamb had always encouraged students to shape their focus in the way they'd remember best.

"Haste!"

Pink dust filled the inside of the 'thopter, sprinkling them all. The shaking of the deck seemed shift to a languid rolling as Selphie stepped up to the open bay doors.

"Happy landing Ma'am," Denjac muttered as she passed him by. He was eyeing the drop nervously. Selphie tilted her head to look at the ranker and batted her lashes- well it put some of the colour back in his face. Then, just to show she could, she stepped lightly off the 'thopter without looking.

"Float!"

She dropped most of the short distance quickly, but to her eyes she glided gently down rather then fell. The spark of Float magic pulsed through her bones and she imagined them turning light and hollow, like a bird's, changing her body to flight. The spell stopped her above the nose-cone, and she hovered in front of the cabin windows there, checking the scene inside. The Haste magic made everything seem hard and slow, as if she were watching through a snapping shutter. People turned slowly to look back through the glass at her. She saw their mouths start to gap open emptily through the windscreen, like fish in a tank.

She gave them a little wave, then kicked out, hard. As the 'screen flew to pieces, she stepped fluidly through and onto the cabin's control panels. Hasted, she seemed to flow like water, while her enemies seemed caught in treacle. Her path had put her straight between two of the hijackers. They'd put themselves at the front of the cabin, keeping the crew between themselves and the locked door. Both were hunched against the roar of the 'thopter, but twisting slowly round towards her. She brought Strange Vision round in a back-handed arc from her knee. The adamantine baton lashed across the unarmoured jaw of the man to her right. Selphie didn't stop to watch him fall. After Strange Vision hit them, no-one got up.

She snapped her wrist, flicking the chain to draw the lead baton back to her grip. She bunched the two together and twisted left to bring the weapon into a low guard, where the second mercenary had taken a tremendous cut at her legs. The man's blow was so slow had there been any space she could just have skipped round it. Instead she blocked it, poorly, catching the blade's edge with Strange Vision's bulbous green mace-heads. She heaved upwards, breaking the struggle and sending the hijacker staggering backwards, suddenly unbalanced. Hands reached round from behind and gripped his arms and waist, immobilising the man.

Lightening roared in the small cabin, and Selphie saw it spark and crackle as it played across her skin. She felt her eyebrows beginning to singe. She came off the bank and lunged at the entangled mercenary, clubbing him before the man could get his guard back up; ribs, shoulder, head. A crew member pressed past her, dripping blood, his arms raised in a warding gesture against the red-armoured figure who'd cast the bolt at her. The hijacker's leader was stretching out with a vengeful hand. She smelt the rich stench of the death spell that his fingers' traced, but the crew were blocking her in. Behind her, glass crunched. She couldn't get clear of all these tall Trabians to save them; and she screamed out at them to move, move, get out of her way-

_Blam!_

The mercenary officer brought his spell hand slowly up to his neck, and pushed two fingers against it, as if to plug the new hole there. He started to stagger backwards, when there was a fleshy thunk as Sakia's bio-knife buried itself into his chest. Then he fell gargling to the floor and began to twitch as the blade delivered its poison to his bloodstream. A last sigh gusted out of him, whistling over the sounds of the other people in the cramp cabin.

Selphie barged a stunned crewman out the way and knelt by the man to check he was gone. Satisfied, she pulled the knife out and wiped it on the cheap blue cockpit carpet. She looked up over her shoulder to where Denjac and Sakia stood on the control panel and nodded silent thanks. Then, with a single gesture, she dispelled the magic upon them all. The crew's excited babble suddenly sped up.

There was a thump as Sakia jumped past Denjac onto the deck to claim her weapon. Selphie passed it to her hilt first with a second grateful look, and then stood up briskly. Outside the cabin the hijackers were smashing at the reinforced cabin door. Selphie glanced at it briefly and decided it should hold safely for another five minutes. She turned back to the freed hostages who were watching their SeeD rescuers mutely. Denjac was already helping the only woman in the group, a pretty brunette badly needing a fresh foundation, scramble up to the broken windscreen and safety. Selphie clapped her hands sharply at the four male stewards and pointed smartly at the omnithopter waiting outside the jet.

"Come on guys! Don't keep your ride waiting! Out, out, out!"

The incessant bleeping of his portable pulled Squall out of a very deep place. He blinked blearily and reached down from the bed for it. He didn't bother to strap it on. Next to him Rin stirred sleepily, and he felt the touch of her mind brush his thoughts.

- _What is it?_

- _It's nothing. Go back to sleep._

- _Don't be long….._

He padded out the room and into the hall, closing the door softly behind him. The wooden boards were cold under his bare feet, and he thumbed his acceptance of the call, impatient to get back to bed. It was Xu, dark shadows under her eyes. Still up working at this Gods forsaken hour Squall thought irritably. He'd have to order her to get more sleep. It looked like the only way he'd get his. He glared down at her image, not bothering to tidy his tousled hair. She didn't say anything to him though, just stared dumbly up at him. Squall felt the hackles on the back of his neck rise. A chill that had nothing to do with the air in the hallway prickled the skin between his shoulders.

"…Xu?" he asked her searchingly.

"Squall," she spoke huskily, with a tight throat; "I'm so sorry."

"What? What's wrong?"

"It's your sister."


	6. Rafale

Cheers anon, glad you liked it enough to review. This is basically rounding off a trilogy of fics that started with Hero, so I wanted to make it a fast paced one. It's not all blowing stuff up, but that comes later. I might take another look at that introduction though.

Nerves had never bothered Lieutenant Kirk Semper before. Either in the field or in front of his commanding officers, he'd always been quietly confident. He could be competent without threatening. It was a trait that had marked him out for rapid promotion from the ranks, and he'd let it. Why not? He had nothing to prove to himself. He'd earned it the hard way, against Lunar Cry abominations and in anti-bandit operations up in North Frontier Province.

At twenty-seven, he held command rank in the Rapid Strike Corps ('The Stampers')- and they saw off more then two-thirds of their applicants. That and a psych report claiming he possessed a high empathy score for a soldier, had been enough to springboard him to palace special duties. Now he was standing _here_, and his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. How had he got into this mess?

The room he was standing in was one of the most select spaces in the Presidential Palace. The solder didn't know it, but every lobbyist in Esthar City would have given their right arm for an audience there. It was small- perhaps only four or five people would fit comfortably in here. The walls were oak panelled, with a picture shelf crammed full of portraits and paintings. The biggest of these showed a young woman with her dark hair cut in the style of twenty years ago. She was hung looking over the pool table, from where she stared frankly out across the room. Apart from the pool table, now covered in stacks of hardcopy, someone had added a stained couch and small gleaming fridge. On the top of that, a kettle was rattling to the boil.

The Lieutenant's escorts- he tried not to think of them as guards- loitered casually by the door waiting for their dismissal. They didn't come in, quite. They were getting an eyeful while they had their chance, Kirk decided. Or perhaps it was free entertainment on a routine shift, watching the officers dress each other down. He couldn't see Captain Valois though, or the Colonel. There were only three people- the men sitting there- who really used this room.

The kettle clicked.

The chief looked up from the couch and saw him hovering in the doorway;

"Oh, get in here Kirk," he said impatiently, "Ward, get the kettle will you? I'm getting a caffeine itch."

The other man on the couch, the big one, clambered up from it and stooped to pick up some empty mugs from the floor. They chinked emptily between his fingers as he padded over to the fridge. The lean man behind the pool-table passed him another as he ambled by; the big one's fingers touched his wrist before he took it. The man sighed, once and heavily, and wheeled his seat about to face Kirk. His hands rapped the table sharply, as if to say; right, now we can start.

Almost relieved it was beginning, Kirk made his salute; "Mr President-"

A long finger was jabbed at him;

"You. Come in, sit down, and shut up," the President said flatly.

Whenever President Loire was arguing on holovision he would never stay still. He would point and jab, weaving his arms around like a windmill. Though he sat still now, his body bristled with suppressed energy. It was, Kirk thought as he scuttled forwards, like looking at smoke curling up from an angry volcano, knowing that inside its bowels fire was churning.

"Laguna, you've jumped the gun again," the chief spoke sardonically. The President gave him a blank look.

"This is supposed to be a private interview?" his friend prompted.

Laguna seemed to see Kirk's escort for the first time. There was a hissing sound as Ward poured for four. Laguna waved off the security agents;

"You people can go now, thanks. Get some coffee or something."

His security chief glanced aggressively at Kirk, who tried to look suitably pacified. Their eyes met, and her look turned condescending.

"Yes Mister Laguna. But we'll be down the hall if you need _us_."

With that parting shot she followed her people away from the little den. Kirk watched the floor until the last guard's steps had died away, curling and uncurling his hands. Then the chief kicked something to his feet.

"Pull up a seat and get comfy, Lieutenant."

Kirk pulled the thing toward himself; it was an embroidered footstool of all things. He hunkered down awkwardly, resting his arms across his knees.

"Would you like milk or sugar with your tea, Lieutenant?" the President asked, looking right past him.

Kirk didn't want any tea at all. He did want to know why he wasn't being screamed at in Interrogation anymore. Or if the man in front of him was going to come over the table at him. His body itched. Two reflexes tugged at it, one wanting to salute again, the other to fall into a defensive crouch.

"I- uh, sir-"

Their gazes locked. Kirk found himself staring down into wide brown eyes that pulled you in and pinned you there.

"I said," the President spoke in a voice gone brittle, "Do you want _milk_ or _sugar_ with your _tea_?"

There was a creak springs as the tall, spare man on the couch stretched his feet out languidly.

"You're confusing the boy, Laguna. You didn't ask him if he wanted anything to drink first."

The tableau was broken, the startled President of Esthar's eyes looking up and inward;

"Oh. Haven't I?"

"Don't worry; Ward's made one for him anyway."

Ward began passing out the mugs. He passed Kirk's to him stoically, as if keeping his real feelings in reserve until they were needed. Kirk took it in both hands, strangely stung that it wasn't thrust at him. He was feeling more and more like a kid called in to see the disappointed headmaster then an officer facing court-martial. Even the President was restrained.

Agitated, he sipped at his tea too quickly, scalding his tongue. The chief noticed, he saw. He put the mug down abruptly; suddenly furious with everyone and the arm's length they were keeping him at. His demand was louder then he'd meant it to sound in the confines of the stuffy room.

"What am I doing here?"

Laguna picked a datapad from the pool-table and held it out. Kirk saw his own words scrolling down the little green screen.

"Your incident report- the first version, not the one that came through the War College. We've been discussing it all night, and I have to tell you there really is only one thing I can do."

He was glad he'd put the drink down now. It would have tasted too bitter in his mouth anyway.

"With the power invested in me as Commander-in-Chief I'm hereby relieving you of your position in the Special Protection Force. You're being transferred to new duties."

"What?"

Laguna's eyes strayed back to the portrait of the watching woman on the wall. He wheeled his chair to stare down at Kirk abruptly, pinning him with that stare again.

"I'm assigning you to head up the strike platoon that goes in when we find where Ell…, my daughter, is being held. You'll report directly to Kiros or me."

"But… why?" he asked stupefied. The words welled up out of Kirk's mouth, though he'd not meant to speak. After all, what else could he say? The President answered him with another question;

"Your report Lieutenant, anything you'd like to add to it? To me?"

Kirk didn't meet the President's eyes when he spoke, but he said his piece as gently as he could.

"We launched five minutes after the Speaker's auto-transponder cut out- that was the explosion- and the manhole cover was bolted when we arrived. We could have blown through the thing eventually but-"

"The gutterbot had hit what, two cars by that point?" Kiros interjected.

"Three," Kirk said "It was morning rush hour."

He stopped talking, not quite able to spell out the split second choice he'd made.

Laguna spread the fingers of his hands wide across the table and studied the backs of them quietly.

"Kirk, whatever happens to my daughter is something you'll have to live with for the rest of your life. Punishing you won't relieve you of the responsibility for it. I haven't ever punished someone for saving innocent lives," he said hoarsely; "And I won't start now."

He seemed very tired as he said this, and didn't look up at the others around the room.

"Dismissed, Lieutenant,"

Kirk stumbled out of the den in more of a daze then when he'd gone in. Promoted, by the Gods! Admittedly sideways, but still… when the best he'd hoped for was a dishonourable discharge, and the worst was a prison cell… the man didn't make any sense… Hyne, he was all mixed up right now.

The Lieutenant looked towards the chief to explain things. He made a helpless gesture to the older man.

"What?"

"How can he talk like that and mean it?" Kirk asked him, bewildered.

Kiros paused and looked at him; "He believes in people," he said at last, "If they let him down, he's more sorry then angry. That comes out when he's talking. It tends to throw people when they first meet him."

Laguna sagged in his chair.

"That," he said, "Was one of the hardest things I've ever done."

Ward patted him carefully on the shoulder.

"…." he said.

"I suppose you could put it like that."

- _fell_

Down onto ice. The wet cold helped wake her, melting through her office clothes and the blindfold they'd put on her. And the wind. It whistled in her ears and she groaned. A lazy wind Laguna would have called it- it went through the body not round. Why had they taken her shawl when she wanted to wrap it around herself? Underneath whatever they'd given her she could feel a monstrous headache building. She just wanted to curl up somewhere warm and sleep it out.

Outside her cloudy head people talked. She heard the crunch of feet on ice, and someone stooped with a grunt and scooped her up by shoulders. They had big, heavy hands with strong fingers that grasped painfully tight. Smaller, spindly hands clasped at her ankles, and she felt herself being moved. She leant her head dazedly against her first carrier's chest and hoped she'd be sick. She felt more then heard a door being opened, and then she was jolted uncomfortably down steps. Groggily she tried to count how many. It might be important later.

_Why are you bothering? _whispered a taunting little part of her, the one she only talked to in dreams now. _You know you'll only wait till Laguna and Squall come to get you again._ A picture flashed through her mind; a little girl's chubby fists beating at a plasteel-armoured chest._ If they do. _

-_Suffocation_

Shut up, she told it. Of course they'll come- I'll be helping them. The thought gave her a sort of soggy confidence back.

They stopped moving her suddenly, making her head pulse. She could hear their panting. Unfit or maybe old she realised. There was a click of metal, as if a bolt were drawn back, and damp air passed across her face. Then they were moving again- a well-oiled door. Her head seemed to be clearing a little though. It was then she realised she couldn't read the people around her. The drugs they'd pumped into her should have unwound her careful thought blocks, but she sensed… nothing.

They set her down without a word, though carefully enough. She felt the clumsy fingers untying the knot of her blindfold. They gripped her head, steadying it. Something, a paper, was shoved in front of her face:

"Focus my lady."

It was a woman speaking, shaking the pages of the paper at her. Her face was hidden with a cheap carnival mask, and a dark scarf and a light coat's hood swaddled the rest of her. It must be very stifling to wear all that, Ellone thought blearily.

The woman continued reciting instructions to her;

"Look forwards. Read what's in front of you. What date does it say?"

She looked at the paper and read out the date. It was tomorrow's- todays?- edition of the Esthar City Intelligencer. They had a good picture of her on their front paper, she thought woozily. She kept reading as they turned pages in front of her; Chocobo racing results, a piece on the Galbadian economic downturn, a corruption investigation inside the city police department. Finally the masked woman cocked her head, then and held out her hand.

"Rafale says he'll have heard enough by now. You can stop talking my lady."

"Who has?" Ellone started to ask. But the clumsy hands gripped her head again and forced it down. She felt a sting at her neck, and heard the hiss of a hypogun. Back she tumbled, down into a black pit.

"Uurrffff…"

"Irvine? You're awake!"

Irvine opened his eyes a bare crack, still not fully awake, but Selphie knew his breathing patterns. She flew across to the bed and wrapped her arms around him, drawing a startled grunt from the patient. He sat up fully and gave her an affectionate squeeze across the shoulders. He was groggy from too much sleep; like an engine, his mind needed warming up. He rubbed at his eyes and yawned. Selphie pulled back and stroked his face.

"Look at you yawning, Irvine!" she scolded, "You," and she poked him in the ribs, "Had me scared sick all night."

"Then you should have woken me up," he protested sleepily, reaching up to untangle his hair. His fingers found it neatly knotted up and he frowned, puzzled. He explored it with his fingers, letting Selphie carry, on more sombrely now;

"We tried! They found you on the field next to that burnt out wreck. I didn't understand; you'd Junctioned Ifrit, you were only scratched. But after we'd healed you, you wouldn't wake up…"

Irvine interrupted there, with a man's limited attention span whatever his girl is telling him;

"Sel, why is my hair in pigtails?"

Selphie knew that reasonable let's-be-fair tone too well to be fooled by it. She covered her mouth with one hand, trying to keep a guileless face.

"…what? Well, uh, you were asleep for hours, and I was nervous and a little bored. Even after I realised what was happening, I just needed something to do with my hands."

"_Godsdamnit woman! _Keep your wandering hands off my hair!" Irvine was completely awake now; "I only have to tell you this about twice a week…"

He began picking the braids out of it, cursing the lack of a mirror. Selphie adopted the thunderous expression of one who'd been unfairly put upon;

"Don't you talk to me like that Irvine! Not after I've spent all day and night by your bedside. You haven't even told me what Sis wanted so much she had to put you into a coma for twelve hours!"

Something half-remembered stirred unpleasantly inside Irvine's head. He stopped unbraiding and looked sharply over at Selphie;

"What did you say?"

The woman picked up on his abrupt change of mood; "You were in a time dream weren't you?" she asked him uncertainly. "It happened just like it did back then, I'm sure it was. I was so angry with El… Irvine? Hon?"

Irvine looked down at her, memories exploding behind his eyes;

"Oh crap," he said.


	7. ReLiving The Dream: Part One

The engines seemed to hum louder at night, a steady throbbing in Rinoa's ears. She thumped her pillow and lay back down, but couldn't get comfortable. Turning over in the bed again, she thought of pulling the blankets over her head to shut out the noise. But it would be suffocating like that in this stuffy room. Her thoughts wandered, drifting over the last day yet again.

After an age of controlled chaos they'd gotten airborne, and been barely two hours into their flight towards Esthar when Irvine's garbled com-call from the _Blue Gem_ had sent them curving back round. Squall had spent all day pacing silently up and down the carpet, pausing only to snap off a new directive or ask her again if she'd sensed anything from Ellone. She'd felt like a third arm all day.

Rinoa gave up on sleep for the moment and kicked the covers off. There'd be none for hours yet; all today's shocks had sent her thoughts spinning like a top. Instead, she swung herself off the bed, determined not to lie awake staring at the ceiling anymore. She needed something liquid, and something to tire her wandering brain; perhaps she'd try checking her fan-mail. Her feet found the floor for her in the dark, the boards pleasantly cool on her soles. As she stood, Angelo's head lifted as he sensed her getting up.

He left his basket and came padding stiffly over. His muzzle butted her leg affectionately, and she bent to scratch him beneath it, and behind his ears. He was getting old for a dog, poor thing. If Doctor Odine was right the link between them should sustain him for a few good years yet. Angelo growled a deep contented rumble in his throat, and suddenly she was down clutching the dog to her and burying her face in his thick coat.

Would she get many more years with Squall? She wished he'd ranted and smashed the furniture when he'd heard the news, she really did. Instead, all he'd done on hearing the news was say a rather chilly 'I see', and put the phone down. He never handled these things properly. He soaked all his feelings up like a sponge till they were squeezed out of him in a torrent. Oh Hyne damn the stupid stubborn…

Rinoa sniffed.

She sniffed again, and knelt back and wiped at her face; Angelo licked at it helpfully until she batted him off. She felt… released. Since the news of Ellie had come in she'd been like a muscle that when hit, bruises and stiffens. Now she was still sore, but working again. She gave Angelo a last tentative stroke, and then clambered up to find the door. Her outstretched fingers found its handle in the dark. Sliding it open she padded off down the hall with Angelo at her heels.

The kitchen was in half-light when she stepped into it. Only the downlights over the table were still light. Lionheart lay on its polished surface, broken apart into its constituent pieces. An oily cloth, discarded energy pack, and a pair of pulse crystals were scattered about it. On a straight wooden chair behind the table, with his SeeD jacket unpinned at the chest, was Squall. He was asleep, his arm dangling uncomfortably by his side, dragging his head down with it. A little drool had collected at the corner of his open mouth. He gave a small, soft, snore.

Rinoa covered her mouth to stifle an involuntary giggle. He could be so adorable when he looked stupefied. She crossed the room and shook his shoulder.

"Squall?"

"Fzwl?"

"Squall, come back to bed. You'll cramp your neck sleeping like that."

He blinked up at her sleepily.

"W's time?"

"Quarter to three," she said gently. Well, she thought it was around then.

He rubbed his face tiredly; "Sorry, I forgot to go to bed. Must've nodded off."

Rinoa squeezed his shoulder; "I'm getting a drink. You want one?"

He shook his head. She moved past to the kitchen unit and reached up for a glass.

"That's not like you, sleeping in the kitchen," she said, "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," he said, brushing the question off. He looked at her suspiciously; "Has Kadowaki been on at you about something?"

"No," she replied, filling her glass from the tap. Angelo began gnawing at the table leg until Squall pulled him away distractedly.

"Then what's eating you?" he asked her, "You never sleep when something's worrying at you."

You're going back into danger just when I thought I'd got you to stay and we have a baby on the way, she thought, but didn't say. It was selfish and it shamed her. But it was true nevertheless, she saw that now.

She took a sip of water instead of replying, then walked back to the table with her glass and seated herself down. Frowned. Looked at her hands and thought of how to put this; "It's just… I just… I woke up just now and felt a little useless. Around you. I couldn't feel Ellie at all tonight. And you were _distant_… I just didn't want you closing up on me, that's all."

Squall, being by nature the person he was, usually struggled to get past casual conversation in moments like this. But he tried. He pulled off a glove and slid his hand across the table, in the way steady couples will when sharing a moment.

"Hey. You're never useless to me," he paused, struggling for something, "I just get… distracted. Sometimes. When things go wrong."

She bumped foreheads with him across the table.

"Whatever," she said. But she said it smiling.

Laguna stood in the plush communication suite and watched the projection table intently. Only a handful of others were allowed in the spacious room with him; Ward, Kiros, and the spindly form of Frederyck Forsith, the chairman of the Federal Security Board, the umbrella committee for Esthar's multitude of intelligence services. A gaggle of experts, aides, agents and advisors had been banished outside for grating the Presidential nerves. On the snooker-table sized device in front of them, ethereal six-inch figures flitted about a neat three-dimensional layout of Balamb Garden's debriefing and analysis facilities. The whole scene was beamed in real-time to the Presidential Palace courtesy of the little oblong Shumi-built Podbots.

A long, floppy haired figure held its hand to its ear and glanced up at the nearest 'bot.

"Are we on?" Squall's voice crackled in Laguna's ear mike. Laguna stared down at his son's thumbnail-sized face and its pixy-sized scowl of concentration and felt the first twitch of his lips he'd had in forty-eight hours.

"Yes," he answered dryly; "We're getting perfect picture."

"Check your tactile links then," Squall called back down the line. Laguna obediently clapped his hands. The control gauntlets he was wearing made an odd leathery smacking sound as he brought them together, but on the table a tiny wheeled figure echoed his move with its metal grips. Laguna felt the sensation of cold alloy touch his palms.

He shook his head, ignoring the trailing wires, and was amused to see his second body doing the same. Uplink technology had come on a lot since his day. It was one of the reasons he loved his adopted country- its endless inventiveness. Hopefully it would lead them to Ellone.

Around him the others were also testing their link to the Mannequins that would temporarily bear their features to the people standing in Garden. Kiros had already pulled his goggles over his eyes. The remote 'bots were usually used by FSB personnel across Esthar wishing to share Garden's faculties. Esthar and SeeD operated jointly in a lot of intelligence matters, and the wheeled Mannequins saved endless back-and-fore trips and electronic traffic. Today Laguna had commandeered them to go to Garden. If he couldn't be there in person he was damn well taking the second-best option.

Movement from the table caught his eye. A trenchcoated figure was being settled into what looked like a padded dentist's chair, surrounded by a loose cluster of robed or suited Garden functionaries. Ah, Irvine's debriefing was about to begin. A woman knelt by him, her hands folded across her lap; Rinoa. Laguna hoped the floor was softer then it looked.

"Laguna," Squall's voice was impatient, "They're putting him into the trance now. Stop dawdling."

Startled out of his bird's eye musings, Laguna snapped his goggles down. The boy had a snap to his voice a Galbadian drill-sergeant would admire. Squall's annoyed face flicked into life-sized focus, suddenly right over him.

"Whoa!"

Squall gave his father a tolerant look down through the camera lenses.

"Follow me," he said, beckoning with his gloved right hand, "Watch that leg now."

Laguna ignored him with dignified silence. He concentrated on guiding his wheeled contraption after Squall as neatly as he could using the little direction pad set into his left gauntlet. He could get the hang of this…

Irvine's head rested on the cushioned headrest, his eyes shut, his breathing slow and steady. Xu turned to Rinoa.

"Okay, he's under the trance," she said softly, "I'm going to talk him through the time-dream. Will you be able to pick up his images?"

Rinoa nodded carefully. She was feeling delicate after spending the morning curled up near the toilet basin. Squall had turned up with warm face cloths and pills, and been so patient and consoling she'd practically bitten his head off. Then he'd been reasonable and understanding with her, which of course had made her even angrier. If he was going to be so stoic and bloody _efficient_ he could do it around people who could stomach it better when he patted them.

She shut her eyes firmly, and barrelled through the slight wave of nausea. When she was ready she stretched out a hand and grasped Irvine's. Xu had waited patiently for this. Now she began the de-briefing, starting to walk Irvine's mind forward from the start of his mission. Rinoa's breathing picked up, and her face wore a tight frown, but her grip on Irvine's hand only tightened.

Psionics was the poorly understood branch of Esotericology. Magic was obviously simply a matter of manipulating the cyclical flow of energies between dimensions, to break the laws of this universe with those of others. But psionic powers seemed to be bound by the laws of local physics. There were competing theories that they somehow interacted with the electromagnetic or bioelectric fields. In fact about the only ones whose existence scientists weren't still over were any Rinoa had demonstrated to them. There was a lot of paranoia around Rinoa's extrasensory abilities. In truth her telepathy, like Xu's hypnosis skills, was only useful at certain points. Speaking to someone whose mind you knew was easy, a parlor trick. You only had to tune your blocks to their thought-patterns and project your speech at the same mental 'pitch'. Reading a person's mind was harder. Read a conscious person's mind and you could pick out their surface thoughts. Unfortunately these were a fragmented, undirected lot. People on secret missions thought about lunch or a thousand other irrelevant things. The mind gave itself a natural cover, the buzz of the subconscious and the millions of little functions the brain constantly carried out serving as a screen of interference to any telepath trying to focus. The more people around there were, the worse it got. When she closed her eyes, she let her blocks relax a little. Stray bands of thought seeped through from the room around her, like snatches of music from a half-heard radio. She focused on the one closest to her, raising her blocks back up to the rest, letting only his through. It helped that he was in a trance. Telepathy works by allowing a telepath to interpret the electrical activities in another's brain, and Irvine's were intensely focused just now. Xu's hypnotism had put him into a relaxed, single-minded state. Memory is imagination, and she read Irvine's as Xu took him back over the events of the time-dream. Without the bombardment of the senses and emotions of the present he could recall much, much more. Xu called the technique hypnotic-refreshing. And he didn't like it. He stammered his answers to Xu, his breathing labored. Irvine had never liked the time-dreams. She caught flashes of suppressed memory, people he'd watched through his sniper scope until he was ready to pull the trigger. He was re-living it all only for big sister's sake. Rinoa reached in and slid between him and memory-Ellone, damping down the feelings returned to him, like oil between gears. Detached now, they both watched the trip unfold, each scene called up in Irvine's mind as Xu grilled him on it. At last she came to her final question; "Is anything striking you as strange, anything at all that might give us the slightest clue where she is?" Irvine-and-Rinoa looked down the length of their friend and saw little white specs melting in her damp hair and on her shoulders. "Ice," they answered in unison, "She had ice in her hair." 


	8. Reliving The Dream: Part Two

Hi again anon, glad you're liking this. Yes, I think you are the only one reviewing right now. I'm not complaining though, I'm getting my second-highest hit count for this fic.

(Author's note) The Grid is FFVIII's version of our own international computer network, the Web. But there are differences with our world's network. The Grid developed first as separate regional networks, which meshed imperfectly into one planetary one. This was partly the result of the disappearance, then reappearance of Esthar, and partly due to the communications disruption at the end of the war against Adel. Global communications were badly damaged by her use of the Universal Spectrum Jammer at the end of the first war. Different governments and private Combines have since proved reluctant to merge their different root servers (The dictionaries of the Grid), leading to several levels of networking.

The searchers were electrified. Even Squall managed a satisfied curve of his lips. Laguna made his Mannequin punch the air. He flipped up one of the eye-caps on his V-goggles and yelled for a technician, only just remembering to hit his gauntlet's mute button first. An aide appeared, looking nervously round the door.

"Mr President?" he asked nervously.

"Call up a satellite map of all areas of Esthar under snowfall in the last thirty-six hours," Laguna told him urgently, "Cross-check it with derelict buildings, cult holdings, uh, any sites logged on the police database as suspicious-posting-"

"That's 'suspicious-pattern-activities' Mr President," said a kindly voice behind him. Surprised, Laguna glanced away from the agitated aide and saw both Kiros and Frederyck Forsith had flipped their caps up and joined him. A glance through his 'live' left eye at its row of virtual icons told him they too had cut the speaker circuits to their Mannequins. It was the urbane FSB chairman who'd corrected him, the pendant. Kiros would have made a joke out of it.

"The transcript of the debriefing itself is already being shared through the Grid between Garden and competent FSB teams," the spy chief said.

"Competent for what?" Laguna asked rather sharply.

"Oh, to be trusted with a high enough security clearance to know this information," Frederyck replied steadily, "And not leak it to the media," he added as an afterthought.

Kiros put his arm round Laguna's shoulders.

"Relax," the dark man told him, "You're at the centre of a high-tech, professional operation here. If anything needs doing we'll think of it. You don't have to be so hands-on."

Laguna smiled tightly, but he let Kiros divert him to keep the peace. If he wasn't mistaken, the intelligence chief had started this informal chat to rein him in before 'the boss' got over-excited by the breakthrough. Laguna often clashed with his spies' territorial instincts. Relations between the Palace and the intelligence services were strained since the kidnapping.

"Well, here's to finding the bastards who took Ellone with this hi-tech operation I have," he said to his friend, who winked at him. "At least we know they're still in the country. They can't have got over the mountains into Trabia. I know the Dragon range."

There was at last the satisfaction of starting the hunt to bury himself into.

"It's difficult to know where to start I'm afraid," Frederyck sounded genuinely pained this time, "They haven't given us a name or a motive. We don't know their resources, if they're locals or foreign, if they have sympathisers in the population..."

"Irvine says the kidnappers spoke Estharian. They're where there's snow and ice," Laguna said implacably, "Mr Forsith, must I draw you a map? We both know the north was Adel's heartland. There wasn't any love of the central government there even before the civil war. The outback is crawling with antigovernment militias, cults, nativists and ex-Party fugitives. Hyne knows, we trained enough of their shady types to fight the Cry."

"We'll wait and sift the evidence gathered at the kidnap scene," Kiros said, "I don't care how good they were, they'll have left some trace we can match to a database."

Frederyck blinked rapidly at them; spies had an ingrained dislike for being pinned down to one explanation for anything. Mostly because there wasn't always just one. He proffered his wrist-comp to Laguna apologetically.

"I took the liberty of having the preliminary reports, including the lab-work ones, forwarded to my account automatically," he said.

Laguna's eyebrows rose.

"It would all have reached you eventually Mr President," the FSB chairman assured him hastily, "They just passed across my desk first."

"I'm sure they did," Kiros snapped at him, "Well, did they find anything?"

"Hmph. The analysis of the grenade fragments found in the Speaker's car would fit your theory," Frederyck murmured reluctantly, "It _was_ Estharian-made; a Wheelan Industries Mark IV plasma grenade to be precise."

"Aren't they obsolete nowadays?" Laguna asked curiously. He knew that make; he'd had them thrown at him.

"Yes Mr President. This one was near the end of its shelf-life; very unstable, risky using it. There aren't many about anymore- but most of the old stocks were handed out to defence teams during the Cry. Some undoubtedly ended up in private hands."

"That's a militia weapon if I ever saw one," Kiros muttered, "Only an idiot or a fanatic would hold on to unstable explosives."

"Yes," Frederyck told them, "But Mr President, it just doesn't fit. Our different branches monitor more then three hundred different groups, cults, cells and individuals. No intercepts or informants gave any sign anything on this scale was being planned."

He held up a palm to hold off Kiros; "Oh, I'm not denying these fringe groups can't be dangerous, we raid a different compound every year. But this is out their range. They just don't have the, the-"

"Brains?" suggested Kiros.

"-Finesse," said the spymaster, "A Red Knight or a Free Federalist wouldn't have set up an operation like the people that snatched your daughter. They'd just have planted a, a really big bomb."

"Go on," Laguna told him, fascinated by the switch to certainty in the man's manner.

"This whole operation just reeks of outside interference sir. The electronic footprint around it is enormous," Frederyck began to tick off the steps of the investigation on his fingers;

"The crash programs used in the attacks were traced back to a fifteen year-old messing around in the City's traffic division systems. The money to pay him came through a re-routed account in Windhill. We traced the money but not where the account was set up from."

He shook his head sadly.

"The money trail lead us to the funding; an automated car-theft ring. The cars' Interactive Programs were crashed and ordered to write themselves off. Then they were sold to smart scrap-yards for the value of the metal. The writer of that program is in a federal prison… and can't tell us who commissioned him to write it. It was all done through constructs over the Grid."

Laguna shifted his weight on his feet as his leg twinged uneasily. He wasn't a man who loved the elaborate, convoluted world of intelligence. His brain worked in a more linear way, and he liked people too much to spend his professional life lying to them. But he'd also had twenty-six years of leading Esthar through upheaval, and his instincts were telling him the spymaster was onto something. Why hadn't there been any kind of demands by the kidnappers?

"Anyone can use a computer," Kiros pointed out, "The Winhill account used to launder the money could have been set up by locals right here in Esthar."

"There's more," said Frederyck, "We've run hundreds of hours of satellite footage through recognition programs in the last two days. We've even studied the footage manually for Hyne's sake. There's no sign of the kidnappers, or any escape vehicle. Or forensic traces at the crime scene."

"That's impossible," Laguna said.

"No finger prints, no DNA, no clothes fibres, no soil," Frederyck told them firmly, "Nothing except sewage and dirt traced back to the creek bed at the drain entrance they used to enter and leave the Ramp. Oh, they'll have taken traces of the attack with them, but that doesn't help find them. Mr President, either this group is the luckiest, most careful group of terrorists in existence, or they have access to suspiciously sophisticated technology."

"Such as…?" Laguna trailed his question off deliberately.

"Mr President, in the professional opinion of my scientific colleagues, the kidnappers used a solid holofield generator, probably portable, and were most certainly wearing skinsuits."

Laguna blinked. Skinsuits were an off-shoot from the early days of Esthar's space technologies. Having learnt the hard way how to hermetically seal someone against vacuum, scientists had tinkered with a range of space suits. Covering one with tiny light-reflective beads, and studding it with mirco-cameras to project what was in front of the wearer onto the back of the suit, and vice versa, they'd hoped to come up with a stealth suit that would allow a moon landing.

Laguna had had the good sense to stop _that_ mission, but computer processing upgrades since had allowed the suit, now modified for ground work, to even project a small range of clothing onto its wearer.And a vacuum-proof suit let nothing in, or out. It was perfect for discrete practical spying. Or avoiding leaving incriminating evidence for the police. As for holofields, their 'solid' three-D projections had been an integral part of the separation barrier he'd pulled Esthar behind after the First Sorcery War. The latest models could be run off a car-battery.

"That would indicate a considerably higher level of technology then we know any known group or country possesses outside Esthar," he said carefully. Inside though, he couldn't have been more surprised if Forsith had just declared Galbadia had built a fully armed and operational moonbase without anyone noticing. _Skinsuits!_

But they'd had a time-dream generator too…

"Not perhaps _any_ group," Frederyck said softly, and he tapped his muted microphone carefully with one long finger.

The silence which followed his words glowed. Even the spymaster looked a little flushed at what he'd implied. A flabbergasted Laguna was momentarily robbed of speech. Kiros though, was a study in outraged loyalty. The voices of the pair rose, two streams of words blending in and out of each other incoherently.

"-don't know what they sacrificed for this country! Suggesting-"

"Nothing! Perhaps rogue elements-"

"Quiet!"

Laguna still had his squad leader voice when he needed it. He looked at the lined face of the FSB chairman, with its sharp grey eyes going watery with age.

"They're not monsters," he said softly, "They're not Adel or Ultimecia, or poor Edea."

"Mr President?"

"_Mr Loire_. I know my son, Chairman. I know his organisation- I helped found it. And my daughter-in-law agreed to let herself be frozen in the depths of space rather then let herself be used," his voice shook slightly, "Against people she loved. So. There'll be no more discussion on this. Do your job and find the people who took my daughter, or I'll replace you with someone who will. Understand?"

"Perfectly, Mr President," the old chairman said quietly.

"Laguna. Laguna? Laguna!"

Laguna jerked his head upright and realised he'd been staring at the projection table broodingly for the last ten minutes. Well, Squall must get it from somewhere.

He flipped his goggles back down and turned his mike back on.

"I'm here," he said.

Squall was staring at his Mannequin, alongside Rinoa and a small dark woman with a stuffy expression Laguna remembered as belonging to Xu, Balamb Garden's Mission Controller. She was holding a slick-looking data-pad, and there was an air of suppressed excitement about the group. Squall especially looked restless.

"Where were you?" he asked. Laguna suppressed a sigh. Time and Rinoa had worked on the boy, but deep down he didn't trust Laguna not to act like a frivolous buffoon. First impressions stick.

Laguna shook the Mannequin's head through the uplink;

"Reading the preliminary police reports from what was left on the Ramp," he lied, "But there was nothing new."

"Well, _we_ may have a fresh lead for you," Squall paused expectantly.

"Really?" Laguna felt his interest in the conversation sharpen, "What have you found?"

"It's a bit of a long shot," Squall admitted, "CASCADE generated it when we fed all the background data from Irvine's mission into it."

Laguna raised his eyebrows: CASCADE was the name for the joint SeeD-Esthar super-computer network; it processed the entire input of data from the pair's satellites, spies, drones and listening stations. The machines used data-mining programs to sweep the sea of information for seemingly unrelated actions, and built up hidden patterns of activity.

Squall gestured at Xu, who passed the data-pad to the claw Laguna clumsily extended. He zoomed the 'bot's focus down to the little screen, and scrolled carefully down through the data it displayed. Part of him was left uneasy at how simple it seemed to just pull someone out of the information oceans. The rest of him read voraciously; they might have a face and a name. After Frederyck, it gave him his drive back.

The pad's screen held a fifteen-digit Galbadian citizen file, complete with picture, of an angry girl. In the picture he held, her face stared upwards at him; pretty but not sweet. She had broad cheeks and a snub nose, with a scattering of freckles across them. Mousey blonde hair, sheered back, topped severe black-ink eyes. The stare matched the body; medium height, with a runner's build, encased in a field-grey trenchcoat.

"Sasha Maria Bennett," he read out when he had finished absorbing the text, "Age twenty-one, served two tours in District-D- ah, a Dingo Desert vet then. Un-huh, un-huh. Captured during Operation Quail, held eight months, released six months ago. That's interesting: no fixed abode, no job listed either."

He looked shrewdly through the Mannequin at the SeeDs.

"A military background, a bad defeat, no job or address listed. Homeless vets aren't new in Galbadia. But no criminal record, no drugs, no head problems reported? That is rare. Not what she seems, this girl. But why am I looking at her?"

"She put together the mercenary unit that Irvine fought in Centra," Squall said, "The mercenary captain there was her old commanding officer from District-D. They call it Malisa there these days."

Xu spoke; "Sasha Bennett is a fixer and information-broker for the National Resistance Army. They're a paramilitary group started up after the riots in Deling City three years ago. You know the city's full of ethnic Galbadian refugees from successor states like Timber. They want to return the favour with Galbadia's minorities," she said with a sad smile.

Squall snorted.

"The NRA is close to parts of the Galbadian military and intelligence services," Rinoa said suddenly, "Mostly people who want Victor Deling to return to his father's 'Greater Galbadia' policies. I recognised some of the names Xu showed me. Even Father thought they were mad."

"The question was, why Irvine?" Squall said intently, "Out of all of us, who would you send a time-dream to? Irvine was in the middle of the desert. No portable coverage, radio silence, and he had hundreds of miles to cross to get back to us. Lots of delay for us before we could analyse the message. Convenient if you're the kidnappers. Gives you time to move Ellie again."

Xu tapped the data-pad Laguna was holding; "Irvine's original mission- when the hostage crisis blew up- was training up the Four Fingers security forces. It was a public mission. Bennett must have known he was there."

Laguna sighed; "Her and everyone else who happened to glance at the SeeD gridsite listings," he said heavily.

Xu shook her head; "Sasha's old boss, Merton- the mercenary leader that Selphie's team got in the rescue- when he realised what a hole he was in on that jet, he started making calls on his portable. Her number was one of them. We checked."

Laguna's lips moved as he tried to work it out; "She could have guessed Irvine was leading the rescue effort," he said at last.

"Yeah," Squall nodded, "The Centrans threatened Merton with a SeeD attack. They wanted him good and scared. And that name the kidnappers used… in the time-dream they said 'Rafale says he's seen enough' remember? It's actually a word in Malisan, uh, the Dingo Desert dialect?"

"Where Bennett served," Laguna nodded thoughtfully, "What does it mean?"

"'Hail of bullets'," said Squall succinctly.

Laguna winced. Rinoa gave her husband a look, then reached up and took a claw.

"We can't be sure she knows anything," she said, "But it's worth picking her up. And if she does, I'll _know_. We'll get Ellie back for you, I promise."

Squall shuffled uncomfortably at his wife's words. Laguna moved the Mannequin's head to the data-pad and back.

"How soon can you get going?" he asked.

Rinoa and Squall turned to look at Xu.

"I had Ragnarok refuelled as soon as Irvine got here," she said.


	9. The Snatch

I.

Squall tilted his head to look out through the SUV's side window. The little trickles of water running down the glass gave the red-brick houses a blurry outline, but even the drizzle couldn't hide the shabby, rundown look of the street.

"Grim, isn't it?" Quistis said quietly, from where she was resting her chin and arms on the steering wheel.

Squall nodded sombrely. Deling City was bigger and poorer then he remembered. It had been eye-opening driving through the housing estates surrounding this warren. Everywhere grey concrete blocks had been thrown up to house refugees from the wars of independence. Their walls had been covered with the murals of hooded paramilitary figures and their angry sectarian slogans. Here and there on street corners had been piles of plastic-wrapped flowers.

But the streets around him were old. Perhaps as old as Laguna, he thought. Something different had gone wrong here.

"What is this place?" he asked Quistis. Behind him he heard the others turning from what they were doing to listen. He guessed the surroundings were getting to them as well. Quistis' eyes flickered briefly over to meet his, and then returned to staring out at the rain.

"Condemned housing," she told them, "They were supposed to knock it down for more refugee tenements, but they boarded it up and pocketed the money instead. There's no-one here except squatters and drug addicts now."

No-one in the vehicle asked how she knew. Quistis would read anything. Zell stabbed at his laptop's keyboard viciously;

"Man, I hate this city."

There was muttered agreement. Squall turned his face back to the window and ignored his friend's gripping. The blond man's chatter kept the others' spirits up, but Squall longed for quiet. Thinking about Ellie as it rained... brought back the bad memories.

II.

Zell and Quistis had met them at the airport, and it had been like old times on a mission. The blond man was back from a career break modelling swimwear, and from hosting his reality street-fighting Grid-show. Quistis been called back from the polar regions, from leading a survey team studying the Blue Magic potential of the new species uncovered there.

Zell had been full of bounce; he'd insisted on showing everyone the positions he was going to twist the kidnappers into once they'd caught up with them. Quistis had smiled quietly at Squall, and cooed over the slight swell of Rinoa's stomach. Then she'd grilled them mercilessly over antenatal care. Leaving the happy couple alone at last, she'd sat down with her old roommate Xu and gone over the mission profiles. Quistis was a natural organiser; anyway, most of the listed names were ex-students of her post-grad courses.

Preparations for the snatch had come together quickly enough. In the end, they'd more or less reassembled the local Galbadia Garden team Xu had used during Irvine's Centran mission. Her people had been all over Sasha Bennett before, tailing, bribing and bugging their way through the woman's underworld dealings. They'd had a good idea where to lie in wait. Bennett bought and sold information; naturally she kept her system backed-up.

Her watchers called it the Den. It was a tiny flat over a drug-dealer's synth-factory; a disused NRA safe-house wall-to-wall with obsolete computers. The small cell that Bennett ran paid the gangster a weekly rent to keep the junkies out. No dealer for twenty miles around would sell to a blacklisted addict. It was stronger security then the Den's six-inch steel doors. The little network inside was filled with juicy titbits of data, and kept religiously separate from the Grid. Bennett had to arrive in person each evening to feed the day's details in.

III.

"Scissors," Zell's laptop blared suddenly, making Squall jump, "Scissors, this is Stone."

Zell winced and dialled down the volume. Quistis reached across smartly and plucked the radio-mike from his shirt-clip.

"Scissors? Can you hear me?"

"Yes Stone, we hear you," the blonde woman said dryly.

"Scissors, Paper is in position," the laptop's microphone crackled, "And the eggs are in the basket."

Zell turned his laptop around so the others could see its screen. Rinoa and Selphie leaned in for a closer look. He'd pulled up a window with a satellite map of the area. It was studded with winking red dots, each marking a SeeD's postion. Each mercenary had swallowed a GPS biochip at the start of the mission. The watchers were spread around in a loose net, covering both ends of the street. The snatch team were grouped together in a little blobby cluster- inside the back of the dented white van rented for the mission.

"Scissors, Paper is asking if you need live visual with this?"

Quistis glanced at Squall, who shook his head.

"No Stone," she said, "Tell them to wrap this up and let's get back home."

"Yes ma'am," the laptop chuckled. On the screen, the dots began to move. Quistis turned the key in the ignition. Zell cracked his knuckles impatiently.

"That should be us out there," he groused, "Actually doing things, like we used to."

Irvine rolled his eyes. At the wheel, Quistis sighed.

"Zell sweetie, we're too recognisable for street work these days," Selphie said, "Let's just follow the van and watch no-one's tailing it."

Irvine's hand inched into his jacket pocket. Without looking, Selphie reached across and smacked it away.

"Not in the Hyne-damn car," she said, and everyone laughed. Quistis released the clutch. And everything went wrong, all at once.

IV.

White, bright light filled the inside of the SUV, dazzling. The engine screeched then stalled as everyone in the vehicle tried to shield their eyes with their hands. The light crept through the lids anyway. Zell's computer fell from his lap to the floor with a crash. Quistis wrenched the handbrake up, stopping the SUV's slide down the hill. Irvine swore one unbroken string of obscenities as he fumbled blindly for Exeter.

"Everyone out!" Squall shouted. Zell snatched up his machine as Irvine booted the back door open.

"What's happened!" Selphie cried as they spilled out of the SUV. Rinoa pressed one hand to her temple;

"Panic," she said, "I can't feel anything but panic."

Zell opened the computer and held it up to his eyes. On the screen he saw a handful of the red SeeD markers scattering north. The rest had vanished completely. He turned the screen round to show the others again.

"Rin, get back to the airport," Squall said instantly, "Irvine, Selphie, you go with her. Get out of here. We'll meet up there at the arranged time. Zell, Quistis, come with me. Let's take a look."

Rinoa's eyes narrowed. Squall was trying to take control of everything, when he didn't have any more of a clue then the rest of them about what was going on. He was sending her out of the way, and Irvine and Selphie too, the only other couple. Bad memories of leading the Forest Owls flashed through her mind.

The SeeDs split smoothly apart, heading in opposite directions down the street. Squall glanced back, and saw Rinoa hadn't moved anywhere. His wife stood stock still, her arms folded across her blue and white blouse. He stopped moving.

Hyne, why did Rin have to choose the worst possible times to be difficult, he thought. The times _he_ needed to protect her the most seemed to be the moments she wanted it the least. But then she snuggled up to him when she got nightmares! He reached out across their private bond.

_- What are you doing? _

_- Waiting for you to tell me where the hell you think you're going._

_- We're in a combat situation. I gave you an order. Get out of here. It's not safe._

_- I'm your **wife**. And a Sorceress. In case you'd forgotten, I can bring down these buildings just by thinking about it! _

Squall broke off the exchange and pinched the bridge of his nose hard. It crossed his mind that Rinoa had been a freedom fighter, not a solider. Fighters didn't cope well with orders. They followed a person, not a rank.

Selphie and Irvine had stopped moving down the street. Irvine, looking edgily about him, loped back to pull Rinoa away by the arm. She slapped angrily at him, and he jumped back like a startled cat.

"Get your hands off me Kinneas!"

Squall took a step up the street. Zell and Quistis stood waiting for him, the blond man jiggling impatiently on the balls of his feet.

"I. I can't do this right now," he said to her, "People might still be alive."

"Then send someone else," she said.

"No," he shook his head and took a second step away, "I'm the senior officer present."

Selphie drew up next to Rinoa and plucked gently at her sleeve.

"Come on hon, let's get you and the little one out of here."

Rinoa sagged. She let Selphie draw her slowly away, but pointed after Squall.

"If you do this…" she called after him, "You! You come back in one piece! You hear?"

He glanced back as the triad took off up the street, saw her still watching, and gave a crisp salute.

"Whatever!"

V.

The van was crumpled as an empty can. Squall couldn't see any bodies, but there must be some in that twisted and blackened wreckage. The billowing plume of smoke from the stricken vehicle cut off his view. His eyes tracked right, passed the disaster. Trith, the lead watcher, was crumpled in the doorway of the squat. His hands were pressed against his stomach, across which a red stain was spreading. A figure stood by him, keeping its back to the alleyway running between two crumbling brick buildings. It wore a crumpled grey trenchcoat, and thick military boots. A gunblade was cocked in one clenched fist.

Squall blinked, and in that moment his mind mapped Bennett's picture across her face. Somehow no one ever wore the right expression. The inky eyes were wider on a tensed face, but they still watched the SeeDs' approach alertly. The sight of them didn't seem to break her poise.

She kicked Trith's weapon away, and stepped after it fluidly, deep into the mouth of the alley. She shifted the gunblade into a two-handed pistol grip, tracking them along the length of her sword. Squall, in the lead, slowed to a walk, lowering his weapon. Seeing the sword-point levelled at them, Zell started a headlong rush at the woman, but Squall's arm shot out and checked him. It was a stand-off.

"Can I get my man?" he called to Bennett, "He'll bleed to death otherwise."

Bennett shrugged nonchalantly; "Knock yourself out."

"Quistis, help Trith," Squall said.

"You be careful now honey," the woman in the alley-mouth drawled.

Quistis stiffened. She gave the Galbadian a distasteful look, but said nothing in return. Somehow she managed to look graceful picking her way through the wreckage of the van. She bent over the lead watcher's unconscious body and peeled back his shirt. She began to touch Trith's wounds with shimmering fingers. Zell and Squall watched Sasha Bennett. She gazed back with a flat, patient stare. She made no attempt to escape down the empty alley behind her.

The watcher coughed weakly. Quistis heaved Trith to his feet and pushed him away; "Get out of here," she told him curtly. He staggered away without a backward look. Quistis and Squall glanced at each other. What had Bennett used on them?

As soon as Trith had gone, the SeeDs took up a wide fighting triangle around the alley mouth. Squall took the point, with Lionheart facing Bennett's sword. Everyone paused, waiting for someone else to make the first move. Quistis made a last effort to salvage the situation.

"Sasha," she said, "Enough now. You're dangerous, but we're better."

"Really?"

"You have something we need. Don't force us to make you come to Garden."

The Galbadian shook her head smiling, and her eyes flickered to Squall's face.

"Hey Leonhart?" she called.

"What?" Squall called back grimly. She'd recognised them then.

"Hurts, doesn't it? Loosing your people? You should have tried grabbing me yourself!"

Squall didn't know what to think. Her eyes seemed to be devouring his face, savouring his expression.

"I will," he said finally, "Don't make it hard on yourself."

Her lip curled;

"Rafale said you'd come running after he sent the time-dream."

This time it was Zell's arm that shot out across Squall's chest.

"_Where's my sister? What have you done to her!"_

"Easy man," Zell said, "She's winding you up."

Squall shook his head to shake off the rage, and glared at Sasha; "Give her back," he said flintily.

Sasha Bennett took a defensive step back into the alley. She turned her head slightly, and reached up a gloved hand to pull the skin tight, so they could all see the clean sword-scar running down the side of her neck.

"No," she said.

"You _want_ to fight… us?" Squall said slowly. Quistis and Zell began closing in on either of her flanks.

She looked at him, "You don't remember at all, do you?"

"No," Squall said, bewildered.

"Funny," she said softly. And leapt at them.


End file.
